Joe Bob Briggs: Prosecutors Gone Wild (Taki's Magazine)
As a prosecutor, you're not supposed to decide who's guilty or innocent-that's for the jury. You're only supposed to present the evidence in a clear and convincing way. You should feel equally confident and successful if the jury returns a "not guilty" verdict. The outcome isn't supposed to depend on your personal feelings. It's not a game. It's not a competition. The words "won" and "lost" should never be used by the attorneys involved.
Alexandra Petri: The butt-dial heard round the world (Washington Post)
I understand that those in Trump World are eager to put journalists out of business, but I think this is taking it a little far. Really? You're going to accidentally call and send a shady recording to a journalist who did not even have the courtesy to answer his phone? Here I thought you had to work and toil and keep longhand notebooks in order to really get dirt, and it turns out that all you really have to do is not pick up your phone when Rudy Giuliani calls. I could do that! I hate picking up my phone.
Jordan Hoffman: Is Tarantino's extended Once Upon a Time in Hollywood worth seeing? (The Guardian)
I'll take this opportunity to say that if you liked it a lot the first time and were on the fence about seeing it a second time: go. This is a gorgeous movie that deserves the big screen, and watching it without wondering when it will break from history - and who will live or die - is a rewarding experience. The craftiness of the screenplay really struck me this time. I picked up on more of the symmetry between the three storylines of Dalton, Booth and Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate. There was also more time to study all of the 1969-era billboards on those California roads.
The king is a playing card with a picture of a king on it. The king is usually the highest-ranking face card. In French playing cards and tarot decks, the king immediately outranks the queen. In Italian and Spanish playing cards, the king immediately outranks the knight. In German and Swiss playing cards, the king immediately outranks the Ober. In some games, the king is the highest-ranked card; in others, the ace is higher. Aces began outranking kings around 1500 with Trappola being the earliest known game in which the aces were highest in all four suits.
Seated kings were generally common throughout Europe. During the 15th century, the Spanish started producing standing kings. The French originally used Spanish cards before developing their regional deck patterns. Many Spanish court designs were simply reused when the French invented their own suit-system around 1480. The English imported their cards from Rouen until the early 17th century when foreign card imports were banned. The king of hearts is sometimes called the "suicide king" because he appears to be sticking his sword into his head. This is a result of centuries of bad copying by English card makers where the king's axe head has disappeared.
Source
Mark. was first, and correct, with:
The King of Hearts.
Randall wrote:
King of hearts
Mac Mac said:
King of Hearts
Alan J answered:
King of Hearts.
mj responded:
Guessing
King of hearts, since he's the only one with an actual weapon.
Dave replied:
King of Hearts. I did not know that. The King of Hearts represents Charles VII of France (1403-1461). He was the king when Joan of Arc led the French armies. Besides being the only king who appears to stab himself in the head, he is the only one without a mustache and the only king with 4 hands. There is also a 1966 British film "King of Hearts" that stars Alan Bates, a comedy was set in WWII France.
zorch said:
The King of Hearts, because he seems to be sticking his sword into his head.
Cal in Vermont wrote:
The King of Hearts because he appears to be sticking a short sword in his head.
Deborah responded:
The Suicide King is the King of Hearts. Coincidentally, I heard the popular Juice Newton song, "Queen of Hearts" on the radio Saturday.
The winds have died down (for the moment), and the damage to our trees, etc., is minimal. My peach tree, whose leaves had not yet turned bright yellow, was almost completely denuded by the unrelenting wind. My local Facebook pages were full of pictures of downed trees about town. Yikes.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, replied:
The king of hearts is sometimes called the "suicide king" because he appears to be sticking his sword into his head.
Daniel in The City said:
King of Hearts
Dave in Tucson wrote:
The suicide king is the King of Hearts.
Roy, the Snowflake Libtard in Gohmertstan (Tyler), TX replied:
The King of Hearts is known as the Suicide King, simply because it looks very much like he's running that sword from ear to ear through his head.
Joe S responded:
That would be the King of Hearts, because he looks like sticking his sword in his head. I used to play cards. I was pretty darned good at Pinochle and damned good at Cribbage, but I sucked at poker. Carla and I played a lot of Gin Rummy, she was better than me.
Stephen F took the day off.
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Steve in Wonderful Sacramento, CA, took the day off.
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James of Alhambra took the day off.
BttbBob has returned to semi-retired status.
~~~~~
BANDCAMP MUSIC THAT YOU PROBABLY WON'T HEAR ON THE RADIO
Music: Halloween EP
Artist: The Lad Mags
Artist Location: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Info: Four women and a garbageman drummer, transmitting spooky garage soul harmonies, somehow pulled from an invented history where Motown begat psychedelia.
Computer-generated headlines are making journalists, fact-checking, and objective truth obsolete. VC billionaire and human unicorn Noa Lukas visits AutoNews, which publishes millions of headlines daily directly onto social media with its powerful algorithm. But AutoNews isn't just crowding out mainstream competitors and inciting partisan rage. It's given birth to a movement of citizen investigators who plan to get to the bottom of a massive conspiracy involving Trump, Satan, pedophiles, and a hungry lizard. Will Noa and CEO Jared Marks (Nick Corirossi) change the media forever? Or will Jared be lost in a complicated plot of his company's own making?
• Pop artist Andy Warhol sometimes gave odd interviews. Once, an interviewer asked him, "Do you think Pop Art is - ?" Before the interviewer could finish the question, Mr. Warhol answered, "No." When the interviewer tried again to ask the question, Mr. Warhol interrupted again before the question could be finished and gave the same answer, "No." Frequently, nearing the end of an interview, he would ask, "Have I lied enough?" He really did frequently lie during interviews. For example, in various interviews, he said that he had been born in Hawaii, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh (the correct answer). In addition, people hanging around Mr. Warhol's studio sometimes answered the telephone and discovered that a reporter wanted an interview with the famous artist, so they would pretend to be Mr. Warhol and allow the reporter to interview them. Mr. Warhol had no problem with this. In fact, he once let an actor wear one of his wigs and give lectures out west while pretending to be the famous artist.
• While in New York to receive the Women's National Press Club's Achievement Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Art, artist Grandma Moses had fun with the reporters. When a reporter asked if she intended to paint any scenes of New York, she replied that it didn't appeal to her. The reporter asked if she meant that New York didn't appeal to her as painting material, and Grandma Moses replied, "As any material." (She did say that she liked the reporters because they were nice boys and girls and the way they came running up to her to get quotations reminded her of the chickens back home running up to her at feeding time.)
• Sculptor Louise Nevelson was once asked about reincarnation. She replied, "I don't believe in reincarnation"; however, she agreed to answer a question about it. The interviewer asked, "What would you like to come back as in your next life?" She replied, "Louise Nevelson."
Mishaps
• Costume designer Edith Head was nominated for 35 Academy Awards and won eight. However, to get her first job in Hollywood fashion - as an assistant - she cheated a little. She was able to draw landscapes well as an artist, but she could not draw the human form well. Therefore, she borrowed a number of sketches of the human form from her fellow art students, signed her name to them, and showed them to the man with the job, which she got. She then began studying how to draw the human form well. Of course, she had a few mishaps early in her career. For example, she was supposed to design the costumes for some elephants in the movie The Wanderer. She designed some colorful garlands made of fruits and flowers to decorate the elephants. Unfortunately, the elephants ate their costumes. Therefore, she was forced to use artificial fruits and flowers for their garlands. In 1925, she designed the costumes for the candy ball in Cecil DeMille's movie The Golden Bed. She used real candy and chocolate in the costumes. Unfortunately, the movie lights melted the candy and chocolate. Fortunately, a couple of other fashion designers rescued the scene, but Ms. Head resolved never to embarrass herself again, if she could help it.
• If famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright had a weakness, it was his designs for furniture. When he designed the Johnson Wax Administrative Building in Racine, Wisconsin, he also designed three-legged chairs that unfortunately tipped over frequently, spilling the occupant onto the floor. The company president asked him why he had not put four legs on the chairs, and Mr. Wright replied, "You won't tip if you sit back and put your two feet on the ground because then you have five legs holding you up. If five legs won't hold you, then I don't know what will!" Earlier in his career, Mr. Wright designed chairs for another building he had designed: the Larkin Company Administration Building in Buffalo, New York. His chairs were called "suicide chairs" because they tipped over so frequently. Although Mr. Wright thought - correctly - of himself as a genius, even he admitted that his chairs were far from comfortable. He once said, "I have been black and blue in some spot, somewhere, almost all my life from too much intimate contact with my own early furniture."
CBS begins the night with a RERUN'NCIS', followed by a RERUN'FBI', then a RERUN'NCIS: The 3rd One'.
Scheduled on a FRESHStephen Colbert are Jennifer Aniston and Thomas Middleditch.
Scheduled on a FRESHJames Corden, OBE, are Hailee Steinfeld and Mallrat.
NBC starts the night with a FRESH'The Voice', followed by a FRESH'This Is Us', then a FRESH'New Amsterdam'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are Jason Momoa, Rhett & Link, and Daniel Humm.
Scheduled on a FRESHSeth Meyers are Emma Thompson, Taran Killam, and Jeremy O. Harris.
On a RERUNLilly Singh (from 9/26/19) are Jim Gaffigan and Antoni Porowski.
ABC opens the night with a FRESH'The Conners', followed by a FRESH'Bless This Mess', then a FRESH'mixed-ish', followed by a FRESH'black-ish', then a FRESH'Emergence'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Ewan McGregor, Linda Hamilton, and Caamp.
The CW offers a FRESH'The Flash', followed by a FRESH'Arrow'.
Faux might fill the night with LIVE'World Series Baseball - Game 6', then pads the left coast with local crap.
MY recycles an old 'Chicago PD', followed by another old 'Chicago PD'.
AMC offers the movie 'Halloween H2O: 20 Years Later', followed by the movie 'Halloween'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 14-Memorial
[7:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 15-Tsunkatse
[8:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 16-Collective
[9:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 17-Spirit Folk
[10:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 18-Ashes to Ashes
[11:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 19-Child's Play
[12:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 20-Good Shepherd
[1:00PM] LEGION (2010)
[3:00PM] ALIEN 3 (1992)
[5:30PM] ALIEN RESURRECTION (1997)
[8:00PM] ALIEN (1979)
[10:30PM] ALIENS (1986)
[1:30AM] ALIEN 3 (1992)
[4:00AM] THE X-FILES - SEASON 2 - EPISODE 25-Anasazi
[5:00AM] THE X-FILES - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 1-The Blessing Way (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Real Housewives Of OC', another 'Real Housewives Of OC', followed by a FRESH'Real Housewives Of OC', 'Real Housewives Of OC', then a FRESH'Watch What Happens Live'.
Comedy Central has 2 hours of old 'The Office', an hour of old 'Tosh.0', followed by a FRESH'Tosh.0', then a FRESH'The Jim Jefferies Show'.
Scheduled on a FRESHThe Daily Show is Noname.
Scheduled on a FRESHLights Out with David Spade are Jon Lovitz, Christina Pazsitzky, and Bert Kreischer.
FX has the movie 'War For The Planet Of The Apes', followed by a FRESH'Mayans MC'.
History has 'The Curse Of Oak Island', followed by a FRESH'The Curse Of Oak Island'.
IFC -
[6:00A] Night Flight - The Who and the Damned
[6:15A] Mama
[8:30A] Lost Souls
[10:30A] Fright Night
[1:00P] Eight Legged Freaks
[3:15P] Creepshow
[6:00P] Night of the Living Dead
[8:00P] The Purge
[10:00P] Thirteen Ghosts
[12:00A] The Purge
[2:00A] Night of the Living Dead
[4:00A] Thirteen Ghosts (ALL TIMES EDT)
Sundance -
[6:00am] M*A*S*H
[6:30am] M*A*S*H
[7:00am] M*A*S*H
[7:30am] M*A*S*H
[8:00am] M*A*S*H
[8:30am] Misery
[11:00am] The Green Mile
[3:00pm] Criminal Minds
[4:00pm] Criminal Minds
[5:00pm] Criminal Minds
[6:00pm] Criminal Minds
[7:00pm] Criminal Minds
[8:00pm] Criminal Minds
[9:00pm] Criminal Minds
[10:00pm] Criminal Minds
[11:00pm] Criminal Minds
[12:00am] Criminal Minds
[1:00am] Criminal Minds
[2:00am] Criminal Minds
[3:00am] The Wedding Planner
[5:30am] The Andy Griffith Show (ALL TIMES EDT)
SyFy has the movie 'A Nightmare On Elm Street', followed by the movie 'Texas Chainsaw 3D'.
It was an historic night at the Governors Awards on Sunday, and not just because Lina Wertmuller wants Oscar to go through a gender change.
Ninety-one-year old Wertmuller was honored in part as a ground-breaker by being the first Oscar-nominated female director. Geena Davis took the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for tirelessly promoting gender parity in media and movies through her foundation. Wes Studi became the first Native American ever to receive an Oscar. And David Lynch got his long deserved statuette for being, well, David Lynch. It was an eclectic but highly deserving group of honorees that clearly represented the ever-evolving and fast pace of the Academy's new face, one that emphasizes diversity and fighting for equality in membership with the still dominant numbers of white males. As new AMPAS president David Rubin said in his remarks, "that is changing."
Rubin said these Governors Awards meant the kickoff of the awards season, and it came in October for the first time, two weeks earlier than previous years, but then again the Oscars on February 9 are two weeks earlier as well. These two events bookend the season, and it was a starry turnout as usual here with numerous possible contenders mingling at the pre and post receptions. Smartly though, the Academy was sure to keep the spotlight on these four honorees, not Oscar campaigns, by changing it up a bit and not interrupting the show for dinner, which this time was quickly served as soon as guests sat down at 6 PM. In the past the dinner hour meant lots of hobnobbing with no one actually sitting in their seats for long. Not this time. When I caught up with Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson afterwards, they were both thrilled at the way the evening (impeccably produced again by Jennifer Fox and her team) went, pointing to the great speeches and tributes coming off without a hitch.
Dave Chappelle accepted the Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center on Sunday by expressing gratitude for friends and family, defending the freedom of speech of comedians and by smoking on stage.
"What are they going to do? Kick me out before I get the prize?" he quipped to the audience, according to USA Today, after he was feted by a long list of fellow comedians and performers, including Jon Stewart, Tiffany Haddish, Kenan Thompson, Aziz Ansari, Sarah Silverman, Morgan Freeman. John Legend, Lorne Michaels and Bradley Cooper. Also at the event was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
The comment that has generated some buzz on conservative sites was one he made about the first and second amendments, as he was defending the right of comedians to say what is on their minds, even among those who "are very racist."
"It's not that serious," he said. "The First Amendment is first for a reason. The Second is just in case the First doesn't work out."
The special will air on PBS on Jan. 7. The first recipient of the Mark Twain Prize was Richard Pryor in 1998.
ABC, the last network to make pickup decisions on its new fall series, has given back orders to comedy Mixed-ish and drama Stumptown. Additionally, the network has ordered additional episodes of sophomore drama The Rookie, which had a 13-episode pickup.
I hear the Black-ish prequel has received an order for nine additional episodes for a full-season 22-episode run. Things are still in flux for dramas Stumptown starring Cobie Smulders and The Rookie starring Nathan Fillion. They are expected to produce at least five additional episodes each for a total of 18, and could deliver 1-2 extra episodes beyond that.
The third new ABC fall series, drama Emergence, was designed for 13-episode season arcs, so it is not in contention for additional episodes but for a second season. Given its modest ratings performance, ABC brass will likely wait to look at their development before making a renewal decision.
NBC is using the same strategy for new fall comedy Perfect Harmony, while CBS' limited-run new drama Evil was recently renewed for a second season.
There is no word yet on sophomore comedy series Bless This Mess, which launched as a midseason replacement last spring and has a 13-episode Season 2 order. It is currently looking promising for a back order.
One of the rarest Pokémon cards in existence went up for auction last week at New York-based Weiss and sold for $195,000. It is now officially the most expensive Pokémon card in existence.
It's a "Pikachu Illustrator" card, a promo given out to winners of a comic contest that was held in Japan in 1997-98. While there were 39 of these cards awarded, it's believed only 10 are left today, making each one of them insanely valuable.
So valuable that someone was willing to pay $195,000 for a single Pokémon card, which is almost 4x the price paid for the last Pikachu Illustrator to hit auction back in 2013, which "only" went for $54,970.
Pikachu Illustrator is notable for a few things other than its rarity. It's the only card to say ILLUSTRATOR at the top of the card, and the only to have a pen as its icon in the bottom right. The unique art-by Pikachu's creator, Atsuko Nishida-is also pretty damn amazing.
A gay Missouri police sergeant has been awarded nearly $20m in damages after he was told if he wanted to be promoted he should "tone down the gayness".
Keith Wildhaber, a sergeant with St Louis county police, filed a lawsuit against the department in 2017, after allegedly being passed over for promotion 23 times. Jurors in St Louis county court also heard that a police captain had called Wildhaber "fruity".
Wildhaber said he was told to "tone down the gayness" by John Saracino, a former St Louis county police board of commissioners member. Saracino has denied it.
Donna Woodland, a witness in the trial, supported Wildhaber's complaint, the Post-Dispatch reported. Woodland testified that she had heard the St Louis county police captain Guy Means say Wildhaber was "way too out there with his gayness and he needed to tone it down if he wanted a white shirt [be promoted]".
The jury awarded Wildhaber $1.9m in actual damages and $10m in punitive damages on the discrimination allegation, according to the Post-Dispatch. It also found Wildhaber had been the victim of retaliation after filing his lawsuit, adding $999,000 in actual damages and $7m in punitive damages for that charge.
In 2011, 10 years after the terrorist attacks in New York which destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, the architect of the hijackings, Osama bin Laden, was killed by US special forces in a raid in Pakistan.
The US Navy Seals carrying out the raid relayed live footage to the White House, and a photograph of president Barack Obama alongside his national security team witnessing the operation was used on the front pages of newspapers around the world.
At the time, numerous conspiracy theories emerged, including that the photo was a fake, that bin Laden had not been killed, or that he'd been killed several years earlier and his body frozen and held by the US.
The death over the weekend of Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who blew himself up in Syria during a raid by US special forces has seen the release by the White House of a photograph of Donald Trump similarly witnessing the live operation.
And this one has also sparked online accusations of fakery.
Top NRA officials found content on NRATV to be "distasteful and racist," according to a federal lawsuit between the gun rights organization and the ad firm that created the TV outlet, which no longer exists.
"NRATV's messaging strayed from the Second Amendment to themes which some NRA leaders found distasteful and racist," an amended complaint filed on October 25 in the NRA's lawsuit against Ackerman McQueen (AMc) stated. "One particularly damaging segment featured children's cartoon characters adorned in Ku Klux Klan hoods."
The complaint alleges that the NRA attempted to "rein in" AMc over such content, but that the ad firm responded with hostility or evasiveness.
"Tellingly, when NRATV finally shut down in June 2019, no one missed it," the NRA states in the filing. "Not a single sponsor or viewer even called, confirming what at least some NRA executives suspected - the site had limited visibility and was failing to accomplish any of its goals."
The ad firm provided a statement to The Daily Beast that rejected the NRA's allegations as "false claims" and ripped into the group's leadership.
A group of researchers say they've pinpointed the ancestral homeland of all humans alive today: modern-day Botswana.
In a new study published in the journal Nature, scientists analyzed mitochondrial DNA - genetic information that gets passed down the female line - from more than 1,200 people across myriad populations in Africa. By examining which genes were preserved in people's DNA over time, the anthropologists determined that anatomically modern humans emerged in what was once a lush wetland in Botswana, south of the Zambezi River.
Although scientists agree that modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) arose in Africa around 200,000 years ago, they've remained uncertain about exactly where on the continent that evolutionary milestone occurred. The new study offers an answer to that question, and also undermines the idea that our ancestors emerged in east Africa, as limited fossil evidence suggests.
Anthropologist Vanessa Hayes, the senior author of the new paper, said in a press conference that the findings suggest "everyone walking around today" can trace their mitochondrial DNA back to this "human homeland."
To trace the geographic origin of our ancestors, Hayes and her colleagues examined mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from people currently living in southern Africa, such as the Khoisan.
A trio of divers off the western coast of Norway had a close encounter with a drifting gelatinous blob - a squid's egg sac as big as an adult human.
A video captured and shared on YouTube on Oct. 6 by Ronald Raasch, a diver with the Norwegian research vessel REV Ocean, shows a diver slowly circling a spherical blob surrounded by a transparent membrane, with a dark mass suspended inside.
As the diver swam around the blob, his flashlight lit up its interior. Inside were numerous tiny spheres - eggs holding baby squid, estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands, according to the video description.
The REV Ocean divers spotted the egg mass during a visit to a submerged World War II shipwreck in Řrstafjorden, Norway, located about 650 feet (200 meters) from the coast. They were swimming back to shore at a depth of 55 feet (17 m) when they saw the blob drifting by, according to the YouTube description.
Raasch described the blob as a "blekksprutgeleball" - "squid gel ball" in Norwegian - when he posted the video. And this was far from the first account of such an unusual object. Dozens of similar blobs have been sighted in waters near Norway, Spain, France and Italy, with reports dating back 30 years, said Halldis Ringvold, a researcher with Sea Snack Norway and the project leader for "Huge Spheres," an investigation of the spherical sacs.
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has returned to semi-retired status.
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